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For us as black people, it was hard
very hard, especially when it came to
us getting jobs. Because even though
we were qualified, our qualification
came from the Caribbean; which was
not recognised here, so we had to go
back to learning and match our skills.”

There weren’t lot of jobs available for us. We had to go and retrain to do the jobs that we do now and sometimes
they’ll give you like the worst job. They want you to sweep the road, clean the toilets and sort of things like that. As I
have gotten older, we could get proper jobs and now it’s not where you used to go to. One time I went for a job and
because my name was Hughes when I got there, the lady asked me for my name. But because it’s a Welsh name, they
were expecting a white person, when they saw me, the lady goes to me, ‘I’m sorry to let you know, but the job had
gone.’ But I knew it wasn’t because of that, it’s because I was a black person with a white man surname.
I know that it was easy to walk down Bury Park without any fear, even sometime when I worked in Bushmead, I worked
in Bushmead Youth Club, where was a lot of white kids went to. I would say to them, oh, after this club I’m going to
go down Bury Park and they would say, you ain’t going to walk down Bury Park, are you? So I would say, yeah, I’m not
scared to walk down Bury Park, but it’s like their perception of Bury Park because there’s a lot of Asian people, so they
think, oh, they’re going to get robbed, they’re going to get mugged.
As I said before, I will walk down Bury Park anytime of night, but some people wouldn’t do that because they’re just
scared and the perception of the people that works and live in Bury Park.
I had some fun, fun memories. It’s like me going to some of the Asian shop and when you go in there, they will know
your name, they’ll call you by your name. One of my fondest memories, my doctor, Doctor Jabbar, he was like Godsend.
He was always there for us, I would go in the surgery, come out about 20 minutes later and everybody’s there looking at
me to find out what happened. But he took time with me, he’ll talk about his family, I’ll talk about my family and that,
you know, that’s one of my fondest memory of Bury Park.
There’s a big change in Bury Park. I know that everybody can go to Bury Park and buy everything you want Bury
Park. You don’t have to say, oh, I need to go Tesco, you can get it in Bury Park and that is good because it’s a good
community because it serves a purpose to everyone and anybody.

There’s lot of fond memories I have form Bury Park, we used to have the Odeon Cinema, where it was the Mecca which
is now a Church. I had a lot of memories there, we used to go there on a Saturday, I would take my kids to the cinema
that was there.

Lynnis Abbey

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